Future's Price
by Shadewolf7
Summary: They'll do anything to set things right. Rewrite of The Price of the Future.
1. Prelude

**Future's Price**

_Disclaimer: Fanfiction website. My, I'm feeling sarcastic today._

_All righty, then. This is going to be a _rewrite_ of 'The Price of the Future'. This story is not completely cannon-compliant. That is to say, it is AU and characters will have developed along different lines for different reasons—OOC. If any of this bothers you, read no further. The assumption is that the entirety of the Kyuubi was sealed into Naruto the day of the attack._

_This story will _not_ have romantic pairings. Read whatever you like into anything, I'm not going to start writing in romance deliberately._

_**Prelude:**_

"You didn't think I'd leave you to do this on your own, did you… _Hokage?_"

Weary crimson-flecked sapphire glanced up to meet desert jade. A flicker of a smile, the barest shadow of his younger self's grins, and Naruto turned back to his work. "Glad you could make it, Gaara."

Onyx as weary as sapphire cut a harsh glare at the surroundings, "Better hurry, Naruto. We're about to have company."

Not surprising, with the way things had been going. Naruto didn't so much as flinch as enemy chakra signatures neared. "This will require _everything_ we have. Kurama included."

It was how it worked. The seal would take their chakra and lives to send their souls… not _back,_ precisely, but to a place in time where everything so wrong hadn't happened yet.

There was nothing here left to save.

Grim nods were the reply. The other two knew the price.

Kunai flashed, blood raining down on lines drawn in earth.

Light flared, the seal taking, taking, taking—until it exploded in light and heat, erasing all trace of itself and those who had stood above it only heartbeats before.

_xxxx_

_Note: I'm going to start rewriting most, if not all, of my old stories. This is the first up._


	2. Chapter 1

_All right, first chapter up. I want to keep the basic storyline the same as that of its predecessor, and make it a little more believable, if I can manage it. I'm also hoping that the re-write will help me work my inspiration back up so I can actually _finish_ this one._

_**Chapter 1**_

Sasuke sat quietly at one of the tables, chin on interlocked fists and ignoring the conversations around him but for the instinctive tracking for danger. He repressed a sigh, keeping his face impassive—he'd been a real jerk at this age.

One good thing about being tossed into his younger self, though—with not even fading traces of Oorchimaru's curse-seal, his mind was clear and his emotions stable. A relief. He hadn't realized just how much of an effect that seal had had on him until it was gone.

He set those thoughts aside as the door slammed open, revealing Sakura and Ino, the pre-teens bickering loudly over who would sit next to him. He'd deliberately taken the inside seat, leaving the window open, making it more difficult for someone to sit next to him.

Save, hopefully, Naruto who was more than likely going to take the window-entrance due to long-instilled paranoia.

Then again… was it really paranoia when most of the world really _was_ out to get him?

Thinking of the orange eyesore… there he was. Only not an orange eyesore as he darted across rooftops towards the open window—dark grey dominated his outfit, fairly standard shinobi-wear, and a grey bandana covered his head. If not for Sasuke's familiarity with the chakra signature, he would never have recognized his friend.

It made sense, Sasuke supposed. He himself was wearing a dimmer shade of blue than usual for his apparent age, forgoing the Uchiha fan. It felt… _vulnerable_ to be in this young, weak body. Whereas Naruto-the-Hokage was powerful enough to not _need_ to hide and Naruto-the-dobe too recklessly honorable, Naruto-the-war-veteran knew when discretion was needed. The outfit he was wearing was similar to the ANBU gear, and anyone with a brain knew that those uniforms were for more than show.

Naruto slipped in the window, that peculiar _twist_ of mixed chakra that he could do turning attention away from him as though he wasn't there, save for Sasuke. He was familiar enough with the trick to ignore the subtle desire to glance away.

A half-seal and a flicker and Naruto was back to wearing a slightly toned-down version of his orange jumpsuit, the bandana tucked away in a pocket. The henged outfit was a darker orange, more similar to the colors he'd worn as Hokage, and not a jumpsuit, the clothing pattern matching the grey outfit he was really wearing. That made it easier to hold a henge for long periods of time—the more similarities to reality, the easier it was to hold an illusion.

Of course, Sasuke wasn't sure if that applied to Naruto's not-henge shapeshift that he _called_ a henge.

Naruto's chakra smoothed and the desire to look elsewhere faded. Taking that as permission, Sasuke nodded to his leader, "Naruto," he acknowledged.

"Sasuke," Naruto returned, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Sasuke nodded once, "Glad you made it."

Dead silence fell over the classroom as every eye turned to the pair.

Sasuke had just spoken to Naruto. _Voluntarily_. Politely. What was going on?

_xxxx_

Iruka's timely arrival managed to get the class' attention off the two 'returning' students, and the subsequent announcing of the Gennin teams erased thoughts of the two's oddly friendly interaction. For the most part, anyway.

The teams were as Naruto and Sasuke had expected, as they hadn't arrived early enough to change _that._ For which there was a bit of gratitude—even if she was back to fan-girl stage, it was good to have the familiarity of Sakura as the third teammate. There was trepidation, too, because… well, what if they forgot she wasn't as strong as they remembered, and did something—or didn't do something—that got her killed?

Neither of them would be able to forgive themselves. They _had_ to be careful.

Still, if they were going to change the future, they had to start changing.

Iruka's voice drew the two of them back to the present as he dismissed the class for lunch.

Naruto glanced to Sasuke and hopped out the window, the Uchiha only a heartbeat behind.

_xxxx_

"Spar?" Sasuke asked as Naruto stopped in 'their' training ground.

"That's the idea!" Naruto grinned briefly at his friend, "We need to figure out what we can do. Obviously, our bodies aren't up to scratch, but let's see how our chakra control is doing."

They had gotten there mostly by roof-hopping, which didn't really take much control—or chakra—and neither of them had found the time to really test.

"Jutsu?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto nodded, "Any, so long as we don't leave recognizable marks from the ones we shouldn't know, yet. After I set up a privacy screen."

Sasuke nodded. Naruto's version of a privacy screen projected the idea that nothing interesting was going on in whatever area he was screening. People would ignore it, unlike the barriers that simply made it impossible to see or hear what was going on inside. Sure, Naruto's did that too, but it was made much less obvious by his twist of chakra and will.

It didn't take either of them long to figure out control was pretty much shot. Naruto was unable to make a Rasengan without a clone and Sasuke's lightning struck erratically.

"Damn," Naruto grumbled, "All right, that's enough. We're gonna have to practice control. Try no jutsu—weapons and taijutsu only." They still needed to figure out exact physical limitations, after all.

Sasuke nodded, cancelling his half-formed fireball and replacing it with a rain of senbon.

Naruto dodged with more difficulty than he had expected, grimaced and fell back on a kunai and academy stance that felt a little—off.

Damn. Muscle memory was built up to the wrong forms, still.

Sasuke noticed, lowering his guard and signaling an end to the spar. "This isn't going to work right now. Let's work on getting ourselves back in shape before anything else."

Naruto nodded, making a face. "Ugh. I _hate_ Mizuki. He's the one who taught me all the wrong forms!"

Sasuke perked up in a distinctly hostile way, "Can I kill him?"

Naruto considered that, "Probably not. He was taken into custody last night, and right now neither of us is ready to stage a jailbreak. Besides, he broke The Law. He might already be dead."

"Huh," Sasuke _almost_ pouted, "Too bad. I wanted to kill him myself."

Naruto smiled slightly, warmed. "Thanks."

Sasuke shrugged, "Anyway, we should probably be heading back, soon. We _don't_ want to pull a Kakashi when we aren't supposed to know how late he'll be."

"True," Naruto scuffed out the seals he'd placed around the training ground, glad that his fuuinjutsu still worked just fine. "Let's go."

_xxxx_

They got back to the classroom before Kakashi, thankfully, and shrugged at Iruka's raised eyebrow. "You said our teacher was Hatake Kakashi. You know his reputation."

Iruka did, at that, but how did two newly-minted Gennin? Upon asking, Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Of _course_ the clan kept records on the only known non-Uchiha with a Sharingan."

While Iruka was distracted with Sasuke, Naruto grabbed a chalkboard eraser, found a desk, pulled out some paper, and set about drawing a hasty seal.

The prank from their first meeting with Kakashi had lacked… _flair._ However, it had also been effective, sooooo…

"Naruto?" Iruka asked curiously as the blond set the eraser in the middle of the scrawled seal.

A pulse of chakra activated the array, transferring its energy to the eraser. A second seal hid the chakra signature.

… Was that even _possible?_

Naruto grinned and arranged the eraser above the door, where it would fall on a certain unwary Jounin's head, then a _third_ drawn seal and another pulse of chakra had the paper he'd used crumbling to ash.

Sakura sputtered, but Sasuke only smirked and Iruka decided to let it slide. He'd not seen Naruto _set up_ on of his rather infamous pranks before, and had to admit to curiosity. Besides, the likelihood that it would actually work on Sharingan Kakashi was fairly slim.

Five minutes later, an eraser fell on a grey-haired head in a puff of chalk dust—and everywhere the dust settled turned to shades of eye-wrenching greens, yellows, blues, and oranges that constantly shifted, drawing the eye against one's will.

A lone eye twitched as Naruto laughed and Sasuke let out a reluctant chuckle. Sakura stammered in horrified amusement, unsure whether to apologize or laugh, and Iruka hid a smile.

"My first impression of you… I hate you already."

Iruka couldn't help it. He _laughed._


	3. Chapter 2

_And here is where the first real alterations are introduced into the story. I'm not dead, by the way. I just have about… oh, no days off between school and work and little enough time to myself. And not nearly as much inspiration as I would like. So, as for updates—no promises on anytime soon._

_**Chapter 2**_

Kakashi waited for his team of ingrates on the roof, trying vainly to finger-brush chalk dust out of his hair. The prank had been simple and ultimately harmless—he'd been preoccupied enough to not have dodged the non-dangerous 'deadfall', or that was his first thought.

Now that he had a few minutes to re-examine the moment, however, he realized he had been unaware of the object falling towards his head. There had been nothing—no whisper of sound as the eraser had unbalanced from the door, no shift of air as it fell—_nothing_ to indicate its presence until it had landed gently atop his head, releasing a puff of chalk-dust that was _far_ too thick to have been incidental.

He rubbed white powder between his fingers, frowning behind his mask. He could see and feel it—but not smell it. That in itself suggested some kind of long-lasting _genjutsu,_ but all reports indicated that such was well out of the most likely prankster's realm of proficiency.

Even from several floors above, it was easy for the former ANBU to sense the near-'blinding' core of Naruto's massive chakra moving through the building, eclipsing the girl's and partially shadowing the—surprisingly bright—sense of the last loyal Uchiha. _Genjutsu_ would indeed be outside his ability, unless he learned more control. There was a palpable _trail_ from where he had been minutes before, and a lingering whisper almost over the entire Academy grounds. The boy positively _radiated_ chakra even when he wasn't actively _using_ it, which meant he had little control.

That explained the Shadow Clone report.

But it _didn't_ explain the rest. None of the three had the training to preform a long-lasting _genjutsu_, and even if they _had_ the only one with the control to pull it off—Haruno Sakura—didn't have the chakra reserves to anchor it for more than a few minutes.

Just to be sure, he flared his own chakra ever so slightly, a mild form of silent '_kai'_. More than enough to break a _genjutsu_ cast by the pink-haired girl.

Nothing happened. Which wasn't surprising, considering she had been the one that had been mortified by the mild prank. Then again… it would have broken an illusion by the Uchiha as well, considering his level of control was such that anchoring would be unstable at best. Which left…

_Seals._

Some kami help him—one or more of his would-be students was dabbling in _fuuinjutsu._ More than dabbling—he'd never heard of a seal that essentially created a mutable, at least semi-permanent illusionary effect.

Also, he was certain that there was something he was missing. The Academy sensei had laughed—Umino Iruka, if Kakashi remembered correctly. After another moment, he sighed, putting the thought aside. It hadn't been harmful, at least. _That_ he would have noticed.

And the ingrates were almost to the door to the roof.

Uzumaki Naruto was the first onto the roof, followed closely by Uchiha Sasuke who was in turn followed by Haruno Sakura.

There was something oddly significant in that. The Uchiha seemed to be subtly deferring to the blond… odd, to say the least.

And not a one of the three could look at him without some sort of reaction. A smirk curled the edges of the Uchiha's lips, Naruto was fighting down a snicker, and even the pink-haired fangirl seemed unable to completely suppress her mirth.

A glare laced with the slightest traces of killer intent silenced the girl, but the Uchiha snorted and the blond ended up grinning broadly.

"You… should really look in a mirror sometime, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto snickered.

… He didn't want to know. No, he _really_ didn't.

He gave them the usual intro, then demanded introductions from them—which gave him a further sense of something just a little _off._

Sasuke seemed resigned to the fangirl, almost amused by her over-the-top worship, but cut her a glare when she said she hated Naruto, and the blond couldn't quite hide the hurt flinch at that comment before his expression smoothed and his fingers flickered through ANBU signs for _'hold'_ and _'later'_ at the Uchiha—who visibly (to Kakashi) bit back whatever he'd been about to say, his fingers replying with formal acknowledgement, as to a superior.

That was outright shocking, but Kakashi kept his expression impassive even beneath his mask. The two knew ANBU hand-signs? How? For how long? And why was _Uchiha Sasuke_ deferring to Naruto?

Although that could have been a misinterpretation on their part, with Sasuke thinking it was a more general 'fine', as there was no way anyone had actually taught the two.

Still, this had to be investigated.

The two boys' introductions provided further questions, Sasuke not taking the expected role of 'seeking revenge' and instead stating that he would protect his precious person. Oddly singular—or perhaps not _oddly,_ but distinctly. Naruto stated calmly that he would protect the village, regardless of position or status.

… Something was off. Naruto was a far cry from the boisterous 'I will be Hokage' prankster reports and previous experience had indicated, and Sasuke not… well. He had never outright stated that he would kill his brother, but it had been expected due to a few vague references to a _'him'._ The natural assumption was that he meant the man who had slaughtered the clan and tortured him.

The whole thing was uncomfortably unexpected.

Kakashi dismissed the new graduates and used _shunshin_ to transport himself to the Hokage's office, frowning behind cloth, so distracted that he didn't even give his usual terrorize-speech about the next day's test; instead giving a simple instructions on when and where to meet him.

His thoughts were derailed when the Hokage took one look at him and started chuckling.

_xxxx_

Something was wrong. Or, if not _wrong,_ at least _off._ Naruto didn't feel as though he was low on chakra, but his reserves had noticeably filled during the day—enough that it was hard to sense past the chakra that leaked into the air around him.

The usage to activate the drawn seals hadn't helped the feeling of _too much_, as the amount of chakra they took was so pitifully small that twelve-year-old Sakura could have activated all three without feeling any strain. Naruto hadn't even had to actively use his chakra, just kind of focus on the seal and the chakra that was already leaking from his tenketsu reacted to that focus.

Troubling. Normally the seals themselves regulated the amount of chakra they absorbed, but he still had to actively emit some into lines drawn in blood or ink.

A quick glance told him Sasuke was frowning. Also troubling—Sasuke scowled, but rarely _frowned_ unless something was wrong.

A quick twist of fingers asked a question, and Sasuke's affirmative reply had the two bolting over rooftops towards the Monument and the trees behind it.

It was odd, really, to see that monument without Tsunade's face looking down at him—they hadn't had the time or manpower to add his when he was elected as her replacement—but that oddness was almost relieving.

It meant things could be different.

_xxxx_

"Naruto. What is going on?"

The blond glanced over at Sasuke, shaking his head. "I'm not—sure. I have a theory, but I need to check with Kurama."

Sasuke nodded once, paused. "Mind if I join you?"

Naruto flashed a small smile at his second. "Am I ever glad that Ino taught us that after—"

After fire and death had taken the rest of her clan, leaving her crippled and unable to continue her usual duties. She had been switched in as head of T&I, but she had ensured that Naruto and his closest ANBU knew the mind-walk _jutsu._ It had been a sleeper agent to trigger her clan's destruction, a sleeper that would have been so obvious if only Yamanaka techniques had been employed upon his induction into the ranks.

Sasuke nodded silent agreement and the two settled down facing each other in meditave poses, Naruto dropping into his mindscape with Sasuke following in a whisper of chakra.

_xxxx_

Naruto's mindscape was lit in red, Kurama lying in the middle of the wide ring of trees that had replaced the damp cage he had once been housed in. He was bigger than he had been, much bigger, and the crimson glow emanated from a chakra shroud shaping a tenth tail.

Naruto groaned and Sasuke settled for staring.

"**So. You have guessed what is happening," **Kurama's voice rumbled like thunder as he addressed his host, **"Your littermate will need his chakra partially sealed for a time if his increased reserves are not to harm him. Once the tail is finished forming, I will no longer be able to hold back my chakra, but your own is already too great."**

"Yeah, figured that," Naruto sighed, raking fingers through his hair. "Anything that can be done?"

Sasuke bit his lip, closing his eyes for a moment.

"**Perhaps,"** Kurama admitted. **"… but it will change you—you will no longer be human. Not completely."**

"Will it change who I am?"

"**That it cannot do. However, you will have youkai instincts. You will find yourself reacting in ways that you will not at first understand. **_**Who**_** you are, your dreams and desires are your own. Your human inclinations will be replaced, your shinobi reactions reinforced. But if you do **_**not**_**, you will die."**

"Will the seal hold?"

"**I cannot say. If you accept my offer… we will be linked, irreversibly, with or without the seal; although the seal would allow for a more gradual acclimation.**

Naruto nodded, glanced at a profoundly disturbed Sasuke, and gestured sharply. "Be back in a few, Kurama."

Sasuke pulled out of the _jutsu_ with a visible unease. "Naruto…"

Naruto sighed, "Not much of a choice, ne? Let me put a partial suppressor seal on you. Should slow down how fast your chakra's building by about… seventy-five percent."

Another long pause, but Sasuke nodded.

Once the seal was drawn, activated, and hidden, Naruto rolled his shoulders. "I need to see when I've got to do this by."

Sasuke shifted, "Naruto…"

Blue met black questioningly.

"I'll stand watch… just don't die."


End file.
